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Sunday, August 9, 2015

I’ve always found writing for
young people, including the high school age range, a lot of fun, which is why
I’ve been doing so for many years now. There’s something awesome—for me, anyway—about
reconnecting with a part of my past, with how I used to feel about certain
things in life, and with what I used to think about back in those Prehistoric
days (OK, it wasn’t that long ago). And
I explore some of that in my first published novel, a young adult dystopian
called The Fourth Generation, in
which a plague that kills everybody when they turn seventeen has been ravaging
the Earth for about one hundred years.

What I find fun about my book’s
premise is that legacy becomes very important for kids in a world like this. These
days, kids in high school are really just starting to think about their legacy.
Or, at the very least, they’re considering and thinking about what they want to
do with the rest of their lives, and what college they want to go to in order
to prepare for that. So it’s interesting to imagine a world where you need to,
in essence, live your legacy by the time you’ve turned seventeen. You’d have to
have started to think about your legacy at a very early age in order to have it
be fulfilled by the time your seventeenth birthday comes around. Even though
high schoolers don’t need to do that, I
think they can at least connect with the idea of leading a legacy, of looking
forward to the type they want to have.

It’s those types of high school-related
themes and subject matter that are fun to explore in a YA novel. Another one
that crops up in The Fourth Generationis
romance. High schoolers are just
beginning to explore or have already been exploring the dating scene for a
while. With my book, I thought it would be fun to imagine a post-apocalyptic world
in which romance is totally forbidden, and how that would impact the teenagers
existing in it (bear with me here; romance does
exist in the story). In The Fourth Generation,
the sexes are forbidden by the rulers to intermix. The rulers’ reasoning is
that everybody needs to be constantly spending their time working hard to not only
keep society going, but to find a way to rediscover electricity and invent a
cure to plague. In fact, the teenagers aren’t even allowed to meet who they’re
assigned to produce babies with (as they obviously need to reproduce in order
to sustain the human race). But, of course, some kids are not going to buy into
everything their leaders say. Some are going to find a way to have themselves a
little romance, or at least discover a way to explore that aspect of life.
That’s why my main character, Gorin, purposefully attempts to find out who the
mother of his kids will be, and the two of them immediately hit it off. I think
teenagers can relate to that sort of thing—curiosity about the opposite sex and
putting themselves out there to satisfy—or at least test the waters—of that
aspect of life. And, of course, some of them can relate to making a genuine
connection with a member of the opposite sex.

In fact, curiosity in general is
a major theme of The Fourth Generation, and
is something I think high schoolers can relate to, too. High schoolers are
naturally inquisitive about, well, everything—romance, their potential future careers,
how the world works, etc. It’s a great age of exploration, and that’s mirrored
in Gorin—as well as his romantic interest Stausha—in many ways in The Fourth Generation.

And I think that’s not just what
YA books, but all books, are about, too: exploration. Reading a good book
brings us to a different time, a different place, and sheds light on an
important element (or elements) of the human existence. Which is why I think
it’s important for not just kids, but everybody, to read. Reading isn’t just
about escaping from the real world to relax and be entertained, though that’s
certainly a nice side effect. It’s also about growing more aware of the world
around us through the story. Sometimes it’s so easy to get carried away within
the real world that it’s tough to step back and really think about it, to
really analyze what makes it tick, and that’s exactly what a good book helps us
do.

Anyway, moving back to writing YA
specifically, when it comes to writing within that age category, I always
include the subject matter and themes that are relevant to that age group.
Which I do for when I write any age group, really. Among other things, high
schoolers specifically are just starting to experience, think about, and
explore things like romance, their careers, and the world at large. It’s a very
exploratory, and therefore very exciting time! And that’s what makes YA (and,
my book, of course, if I don’t say so myself) so much fun. And I hope those who
“explore” The Fourth Generation find
it fun, as well.

Guest Contributor -- Author Chris von Halle Chris von Halle has had many different lives in many different worlds—the
near and distant future Earth, other planets, and even other dimensions—and his
books recreate his childhood memories of such outlandish locations.In this world and life, he lives in
Ridgewood, New Jersey, and enjoys such extraordinary activities as playing
videogames, tennis, and basketball, and writing the occasional comic strip.